The Stone Sky

“The societal treatment of humans who can sense and act upon Earth and its rock allows N.K. Jemisin to interrogate four themes relevant to transitions. How should we live in a climate-changed world? What role does racial and social subordination play in destroying the environment? What are the dangers of hubris in seeking out a fundamental change through science and technology that cannot be readily controlled after all? How should we think about Earth itself?” – Alastair Iles, 2019

(Iles wrote a fascinating journal article about environmental justice based on the concepts of Broken Earth, it’s a good read!)Warning: Mild spoilers ahead, in spoiler tags.I am finally done with the Broken Earth series! 2021 may almost be over, but at least I crossed off one of my many half-finished book series. Compared to the second book in the series, the third certainly is much more engaging and enjoyable—I found myself coasting along the pages, and though I put it down briefly for work, it wasn’t hard to pick it up again. That said, I do have some reservations about the book and the series as a whole; I initially felt like giving this 4 stars after finishing, but I’m going to settle for 3 stars because I want to be fair and both convey the enjoyment of the series and the concluding part, but also air some of my grievances with the series.While the plot finally gets going in the third part of the series after a fairly standstill second part, there is still a lot of worldbuilding happening in this book. Don’t get me wrong—I love worldbuilding, and the Syl Anagist chapters in this book are some of my favorites. However… the third and final book of the series is not a great place to dump the entire foundation of your worldbuilding. I would understand if there were strategic placements and hints throughout the series, but a lot of what is revealed here doesn’t have a noticeable precedent. I can see how re-reading the series might be good after finishing it, but I don’t tend to do that for books, so that isn’t an avenue I’m going to experience, at least any time soon; and a book shouldn’t have to be re-read to be fully appreciated, in any case. The plot that does happen in this book is also at an odd pace. Essun’s chapters range from a slow day to entire months, and there’s little consistency there, except what the narrative demands. The characters… consistent with the other books, Hoa was still my favorite character here, with a great amount of appreciation for the side characters. I do wish Ykka and Tonkee had played a bigger role in this book, but they seemed relegated compared to the previous book. Now here’s one of my biggest gripes with the third part, and with the series as a whole: I hate Nassun. There you go, I said it—she is the worst character and easily the most annoying. I did not care about the ‘mother-daughter’ bond that the book and series serves to underline, because Nassun came off as entirely unlikeable and way too OP. Jemisin makes her a central character starting in the second book, and in the third book much of it is from her perspective, which didn’t help. I did like the bits of worldbuilding and exploration we see from Nassun’s perspective, but her inner dialogue and persona just grated the entire time.I understand that Jemisin wants to portray a child scarred by trauma, distrustful of adults, and coming into her own powerful abilities all while battling a severe sense of alienation. But despite this lofty goal, I don’t think she succeeded in a convincing portrayal as such. Nassun is powerful, but overly so, which is confusing, because she’s technically only half-orogene—and yet somehow, she is more powerful than her mother. How does that make any sense? It’s too convenient. Moreover, yes, she has severe trauma from all the adults in her life—which makes her attachment to Schaffa even weirder, as she seems fairly quick there to become his devotee despite all the abuse she has just gone through. It feels like Jemisin tried to create the edgiest 10-year old child with magical powers and also make her a poster child for abuse, trauma, alienation, etc. while still occasionally remembering to interject that she is, in fact, a child. This is at times over-bearing and at other times inconsistent. A much better portrayal of such a character is probably Mariko or Nana from Elfen Lied, and even those examples are a bit overly dramatic, but less so than Nassun, good grief. (I hate most children normally, but Nassun really took it to a whole other level.)The other characters were more or less forgettable, aside from the main few, and even then, the climax of the novel ended up making the side characters somewhat irrelevant. Yes, it’s great that Essun realized she has friends now, but what is the point of that if her connections cease to matter once she has died? (I view stone eater Essun as entirely different. She isn’t going to go back to her old friends.) And what was up with Lerna and Essun being pregnant—it was completely irrelevant by the end of the book. Was I supposed to feel pity or something? I just didn’t care. Essun has admitted that she hasn’t been a great mother, and I didn’t care about her obsession with Nassun, so the pregnancy ‘subplot’, if you can call it that, just felt contrite. The Syl Anagist perspective did provide us with more interesting characters and backstory—I almost wanted a novel just based around that setting alone, instead of being mashed up in this final book. The reveal of Hoa’s framing as a ‘preparation’ for stone eater Essun was also quite interesting.Now, more of a general criticism for the themes of the series—the books are too dark, not in an interesting grimdark way, but in an edgy way. And I’m someone who loves dark and gritty—the more the better. And yet. There are mountains upon mountains (hah) of suffering dished out to all characters incessantly, and somehow you’re expected to feel sympathy for all of these characters. I didn’t connect strongly with many of the characters, and even though Hoa was one of my favorites, some of his actions still seemed quite ridiculous and odd. His motivation—as is everyone else’s in the Stillness—is grounded in pain and suffering. If the people of the Stillness have adapted to this suffering and uncertainty, and this is their new normal, why should I as an outside observer feel any differently? For example, hundreds of people die in the desert trek, and that’s no big deal to Essun or to the others, it seems. Jemisin didn’t convince me that the stakes matter, so the suffering and pain just seemed excessive rather than emotionally significant.There were themes I enjoyed as well—somewhat perennial, but cleverly done in this series nonetheless: the definition of personhood, what it means to be a civilization, how to come to terms with one’s identity and past, constructing a society in light of injustice, what reparations must look like, the role of balance in environmental relations, and so on. In light of these, the worldbuilding was enjoyable and the story thought-provoking—though at times over-the-top. Some of the messaging, particularly around modern social justice issues, was extremely heavy-handed. (Some other reviews have commented about how the blunt comparison with orogenes as a marginalized group is a bit awkward, considering that orogenes, especially kids, are inherently dangerous if untrained—some of the fear and backlash against orogenes is warranted, given that they do pose a risk. Comparing real marginalized people to this message of ‘accepting one’s self as a monster—but with good intentions’ feels a bit of a strange choice.)I get Jemisin’s perspective is from a place of real pain and anger at the what society deals with issues of social justice, and I’m with her on that; I just don’t think the way to incorporate that is to drop ‘hints’ as subtle as bricks in your speculative fiction series. At that point you might as well write a blog post, not couch a somewhat lacking fictional story to wrap around your would-be blog post. The philosophical, psychological, and moral issues surrounding social justice are of course important to discuss, but the way it is done in this series feels more superficial and surface-level than substantive.There were a few confusing plot holes, or things that didn’t weren’t fully explained that I wished were, like from the previous books; Jemisin seems to couch some of the storytelling in abstract language, but as a reader this doesn’t leave me much substance to actually digest. How does orogeny and magic actually work? How were the first obelisks made? How did the stone eaters make other stone eaters? How exactly does the silver ‘magic’ work? Can all orogenes manipulate it? Why is Nassun essentially a reborn tuner? How does Hoa recharge the vehimal at the end if he doesn’t have magic? Other plot points were glaringly obvious when they probably were meant to be subtle. For example, that the stone eaters would comprise of the original tuners, Steel being Remwha, etc.Despite these shortcomings, I was still glad to finish the series and finally get a conclusion to the overarching plot. Some aspects of this series were quite enjoyable and memorable, others less so; but that goes for most series. Maybe someday down the road I’ll even re-read this series and improve my opinion of it. I do applaud Jemisin on the worldbuilding and the narrative, as it couldn’t have been easy crafting thousands of years of story and character development and being patient with the payoff for this third book. I did find the ending a bit anticlimactic, but still satisfying. If you’ve gotten past the dreary second book slump, you should definitely finish the third and complete the series. Out of the three, the first book was probably the most immersive and captivating, with certain parts of the third coming up close, and the second book being the least compelling. For the series overall, I might go with 3 or 3.5 stars—not quite settled.